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Students caught in crossfire amid strike at Ontario colleges

Humber College student Kate Nodwell fears she won’t graduate from her three-year public relations course if she can’t finish her last eight weeks of classes by year-end. She has a one-way ticket to England for a coveted internship that starts in January, and she’s not about to give that up.

Calvin McDonnell, who hopes for a career in water treatment, wonders how he’s going to make up the lab time he needs to analyze water samples for chemicals during his last year of environmental technology at Fanshawe College in London, Ont.

And Greg Kung, a second-year paramedic student at Humber, says his class is being robbed of a crucial part of the program — ride-alongs with crews in the community to experience life on the job.

They are among the roughly 300,000 college students across Ontario caught in the crossfire this week as 12,000 faculty went on strike Monday after negotiations ended between their union and the province’s 24 public colleges.

“I can’t sleep because of all this and I have classmates feeling the same way,” says Nodwell, 28, who is in her final year of an advanced diploma.

The internship she lined up in England is for the work semester required to complete her diploma. She can’t put that on hold if classes extend into the new year as a result of the strike.

Like students across the province, Nodwell is uncertain how the labour disruption is going to affect her studies and her future, and has been relying on news reports and social media for updates since full-time professors, part-time instructors, counsellors and librarians walked off the job.

“I’ve worked so hard,” says Nodwell, who has two part-time jobs to pay for school. But the lack of reliable information, uncertainty and inability to plan is causing a lot of anxiety.

She says she fully supports striking faculty “but when you add it all up it’s very, very stressful and we’re just being left in the dark.”

Talks, which ended Sunday after the bargaining team for the colleges rejected the final offer from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, were not scheduled to resume as of late Tuesday.

Calvin McDonnell, 21, was so upset when he heard the news Sunday that he wrote to his local MPP, NDP education critic Peggy Sattler, who recounted his situation during Question Period at Queen’s Park on Monday, demanding the government send both sides back to the bargaining table.

McDonnell said in an interview he is laden with OSAP loans and doesn’t want to take on more debt as a result of delayed completion of his program.

“Right now it’s our most intense semester,” says McDonnell. “Most of our study is in the lab and tuition is paying for the equipment.”

But all that is currently cancelled.

College students aren’t the only ones affected. There are currently 91 collaborative programs in Ontario run through partnerships between universities and colleges. Depending on the program, those are also experiencing cancellations.

About 5,000 students enrolled at University of Guelph-Humber, located on the Humber campus in Toronto, are facing cancelled classes, including those taught by Guelph University professors.

Thousands of students in collaborative nursing programs involving 13 universities and 21 colleges are also feeling the impact.

The largest such program is between Ryerson University, George Brown College and Centennial College. It’s currently business as usual for students who enrolled through the university, while students whose home site is one of the colleges are dealing with cancelled classes and placements, said Ryerson spokesperson Johanna VanderMaas.

At Queen’s Park on Tuesday, Premier Kathleen Wynne urged the colleges and union to restart negotiations and put an end to the strike.

“I am very concerned about it,” said Wynne. “I hope that, in the very short future, we will see that the parties are at the table and they can hammer out an agreement.”

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But paramedic-in-training Greg Kung of Humber says the practical nature of many college programs means that valuable workplace learning is missed with every day of the strike.

Losing the hands-on experience is causing “a lot of pressure,” says Kung, 28. “Judging from other students we’ve talked to in programs like nursing, there is a sincere worry and anxiety.”

That’s a big concern for Avery Mackintosh, who is taking a one-year graduate certificate in addictions and mental health at Durham College.

While it may be possible to catch up on reading academic material, she says the crucial workshop component of the program, which allows students to role play and be critiqued on their interaction skills, is key.

“A lot of the content is practical skills,” says Mackintosh, 22, who earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Trent University.

“We’re not learning everything we should be learning.”

James Fauvelle is learning — just not exactly the way he expected. Fauvelle, 40, is in his second year of Centennial’s social service worker program, which he says has a strong social justice component.

So he’s organizing a Toronto march from Bay and Bloor Sts. to Queen’s Park at noon Thursday to “show our solidarity” with faculty — many of whom are part-time and teach anywhere from seven to 12 hours a week.

Fauvelle says he works part-time and his wife is juggling three jobs so the situation is taking its toll.

“Honestly, a lot of us just can’t afford it,” he said.

OPSEU is seeking more job security for those instructors and wants half of faculty to be full-time — versus the current one-third they represent by head count. Full-time staff currently account for half the teaching hours.

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